 Hi, my name is Colton Cook. I'm the vice president of the Alabama 4-H state ambassadors and today I'm interviewing George Edmondson. Do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah? Hey, what's up? My name is George Edmondson. I'm owner of seed creative video production. We are based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama We have been in production now as a as a company. I've been a full-time video guy for almost seven years now Okay, so what was your major in college? I know a lot of people in this field. They don't go to college for this Yeah, so my major in college. I was actually a music major. I had a vocal scholarship At the time I was in college. I was also in a band The band had the opportunity to sign to a record label and we got to tour and we got to do some touring in Europe Which was really fun But when I went to Europe I was gone from school for so long There was no way I could make up the work. So I'm actually a college dropout. Um, and I didn't I didn't finish so part of that Journey is actually what led me to video production But to answer your question. Yeah, my I was actually a vocal major in uh when I was in college That's interesting. I want to be I want to major in music education Oh, sweet Okay, what is the day like in your job? Ah, so a day in video production Every day is totally different and that is absolutely true One day you may be here in the studio Filming, you know, just some people on like a simple backdrop and then you sit here and you edit It's really chill other days. You may be crawling down 50-foot hole in the ground and you're filming guys and you have all this That stands for personal protection equipment. So you've got masks and and air Air things on your back and other days you may be filming Probably the weirdest thing I've ever filmed was a facelift and that was a very interesting experience And so some again, sometimes you're doing stuff like what we're doing today You know a simple light microphone Really simple setup and then other days you're crawling down a shaft Or filming a facelift. So every day is is totally different And that's one of the things that I really enjoy about what I do Is that there's every day does not look the same It give you get to eat you get to meet so many interesting people As you do this you get to learn Different things just about all different types of industry One of the things that we do We film for like workforce development. So we're really heavily involved in Different industries all around our area And so I get to see sometimes I get to see how a tire is made one of our clients is BF Goodrich Other times I might get to see how pepsi is bottled because Buffalo Rock is a pepsi bottling company And they're one of our clients so every day totally different and and that's one of the things that I really love about what I do Okay, what is the best thing about your job? The best thing about my job Um, probably because I am the owner is the flexibility Um, you know, I started as a freelance videographer And then now I guess I'm the owner of a production company because I do have people that work for me But I just I love being my own boss. I love being able to say I want to take vacation with my family. I have a wife and four kids Sometimes we want to go to disney world. Sometimes we want to go to the beach I'm able to look at my look at my schedule and I can block off time and I can just do it I don't have to ask for permission That that's probably what I love about this job On the flip side of that You are your own boss and so if you're not You know, if you're not dedicated if you don't have the drive You're going to be sitting around twiddling your thumbs Because you have no work because you haven't been hustling on the days that you were at work Um, and so it's both a good thing and a bad thing, but yeah flexibility is is fantastic What advice would you give that you're interested in your job? So the advice I would give to someone who's interested in doing what I do number one is just create And it doesn't matter what gear you have This is the biggest thing that people that want to go into this get so they get so upset because they don't have the big fancy light They don't have the microphones and the cameras and all the equipment. That's okay If you want to get started in filmmaking video If you have a cell phone if you have access to a smartphone More than likely it can film video and you can start creating Now don't wait. There's no point in waiting Create make video find find kind of your niche find what you enjoy the types of filmmaking You can edit on a phone. There's a million free editing apps And just create things From there you'll begin to to like I said, you'll begin to find your niche and figure out What you like about it what you might not like about it And then just start to save up a little bit of money and maybe get a little tripod that you can sit your camera in your phone And then maybe a microphone and just build up. That's the way that I built my business Was I built my business with starting out with a small. It's called a dslr is a style of camera With a small dslr and free editing software and then we've been able to build it up debt free Over the last seven years to what we do now So that's number one number two and this goes hand in hand start creating number one number two Find people like me That are near you that you can just talk to and say I'm interested in doing what you do Can I shadow you for a few days? Can I watch what you do? Um, you know, uh, can I come and hang out at the studio and watch you stuff like that? I have people all the time in and out of the studio that just come for a few days They watch it and then they leave and maybe they go make videos and maybe they realize It's not for me because it is always different. Um, sometimes it's very stressful Sometimes it's high demand. You have to meet deadlines. You have clients that you have to make happy But then other times, you know, I personally of course, I love it. That's why I keep doing it. Um, but yeah Number one make stuff. It doesn't matter your equipment does not matter. I promise you just do it Make it number two Get connected with people who are already established ask them questions because most of the time There'll be someone like me who absolutely loves talking to people About what I do and I love helping people. Um, kind of figure out if it's right for them Okay, a lot of adults don't believe that filmmaking or video creation is a viable Career for their child. What would you say to a parent to assure them that they could do that? um What I would tell a parent who may be Conflicted with the the idea that video creation is a career pathway I guess number one is you're watching a video So, uh, you're watching a video about someone who has successfully Over the last seven years grown a business Broad on employees and provided a lifestyle for my family. I have a wife and four kids Um, that was unachievable Uh prior to me starting this there's no way we would have been able to live The lifestyle that we live, um without video Um, so I guess that that's number one number two my daughter. Uh, again, I have four kids my daughter. Who's nine She is really interested in video and I already have her started With we had she has a little iPod touch and a little program called iMovie It's a free editing software and she makes little vlogs and little fun little videos for youtube But what she doesn't even understand she does it for fun. I didn't force her But what she doesn't understand is she's already at nine years old found something that she loves And she's beginning to understand the fundamentals of storytelling of editing of shooting of framing She's doing all this stuff. She doesn't even know it By the time she is is college age You know, she may very well be working full time for me And she already has a career pathway, um in place So but that's what I would say, um Video is everywhere. We all know it is it's everywhere you look it's on every device Um, you go on any social media all social medias Offer video support. So if you think about that anywhere instagram facebook youtube LinkedIn twitter all of these offer video support Um, and that's because video is here to stay and it's only growing I was very fortunate when I got into this is right when video started becoming accessible to everyone because of smartphones Um instagram had not even started offering video support when I started and then they did and I was one of the first ones at least locally To recognize that there's opportunity here for companies if you have an instagram You can now make videos and I can make those videos and they're going to be professionally done And not something shaky and shot on a phone by you know, someone who Isn't trying to take advantage of that. Um, so look I understand it's scary As a parent you want the best for your kid and you want to know that they're going into an industry That's here to stay Video is exploding It's not only is it here to stay but there's More of a demand and will continue to be more of a demand As more people have access to that thing and the internet. So No worries there. Uh, I'm good. My family's good. We're gonna make videos And this is gonna be what I do until I until I retire and then I'll probably still do it just because I love it Okay Especially in alabama from what I can see it's not necessarily saturated with Video production and things of that nature. How hard was it for you to gain traction? Or how hard do you think it would be for someone to gain traction here in alabama? So the market is not saturated in alabama. That is absolutely true If you go to places like los angeles uh, Atlanta New york There's a lot of video people but there's also a high demand for video. So even in those areas You're probably gonna find more quantity of work As opposed to here in alabama You might not find the quantity you might not be able to just get get hired get hired get hired how you do over there But what I've found is i'm able to have um better quality rates because There's not a lot of people offering what we do at the level that we offer And so I may have one client who can take care of my bills for the next six months As opposed to if i'm in a saturated market. I have to find 60 clients to take care of my bills for six months. So um With that said for me it wasn't it wasn't too difficult Because I do have a sales background and a sales mentality and I know that first and foremost It doesn't matter how many videos I make and how great they are if i'm not actively pursuing new clients It's going to be really hard for me to get new clients Some of them will see what i'm doing and now we're in a place where we've done so much work and we have so many clients We just get clients from word of mouth and they see us online and stuff like that But there at the beginning. I mean, I was I was going door to door and introducing myself and explaining I'm a video person. I'm just looking to build a portfolio. I'm not looking for any sort of high Pay right now just anything that'll cover a couple hours for me to shoot and edit and I got told no 90 of the time But that 10 percent that said yes Are again the foundation the building block to where I am now Um, and so you have to you have to sell so how hard was it? That's I don't know that's that's a hard question for me to answer because yes, it was hard but I have a sales mentality and i'm used to being told no and so Um, that's one thing skip back to one of the questions you just asked about parents Your kid has to be able to take it when they say no because I get told no a lot I've gotten told no a lot But those yeses are the ones that matter and so it's a numbers game. You keep at it. You're gonna do it Um, it's not saturated. I mean right now and it's easier to sell video now than it was seven years ago when I started Um, because people are seeing it all over the place And there are people like me and like others that do it in this area that have opened Um people's eyes to the fact that you can have a video done professionally and it will make a difference and provide an ROI for your business. Um, and so Yeah, it's it's not saturated in alabama. There's but there is there's plenty of work Um, literally anywhere you go. I mean we have clients all over the world So keep that in mind too. We are in alabama, but the internet is a powerful powerful tool Some of our biggest clients are in washington state and we've done stuff for a company in china and we've uh done stuff for We've been sent to australia By the company in washington, so they're not even in alabama and they send us to australia to film so Again, it's don't don't think I wouldn't think that way anymore. The world is a lot smaller now. Um Just because you're based in alabama is almost irrelevant at this point If you do good work and if you make the right connections You're gonna be able to find work. I have no the you know that we've been doing it for years. It's no issues Okay, so who would hire a production company? Who would hire a production company? Fantastic question Um Anyone and everyone can hire a production company. Uh, it just depends on what their expectations are Um, and what their budget is, you know, I mean we at the end of the day, this is a business I absolutely love what I do Um, but I have to run it like a business. Um at first I said yes to everyone now. I'm a little bit more picky You know, a lot of people will contact us and it might not be uh, their expectations are at a lower level And they expect a lower production quality and value So they expect to pay a lower rate that makes total sense But we have structured ourselves to only accept Medium to high budgets if that makes any sense at all. So, um, you know, I typically tend to pass those jobs off to We talked about it earlier Students people who have contacted me in the past that want to do this. They don't know how to get clients I'll tell the I'll tell the person straight up if they contact me, you know, we don't do weddings anymore You know, we don't we don't edit things for you know, we get a lot of requests Especially now during the COVID-19 To do editing for of picture slideshows for funerals stuff like that and you know Seed creative my company doesn't offer that anymore But I know plenty of guys who are getting their foot in the door and they will do it and they will do it at that lower rate Because they need the experience um Colton, I think his video made me froze. Do you think? Um, I'm not I think so Let's see if he hops back on there he comes All right, so the power just blew in our studio. Sorry about that Uh, but we were on the question who hires a production company And the answer again is anyone and everyone so um a list of some of our clients, uh, bf. Goodrich Um, macabee construction, uh, buffalo rock. They're a Pepsi bottling company We've done work for the university of alabama. We've done work for the university of alburn We've done work for you perk coffee across the street So we get a lot of different, uh, we get a wide variety of clients and um, again That's why I love it because I get to see people and and learn about different industries and all that good stuff Okay, so what kind of content do you make? I know you just said like you used to do weddings But now you don't so could you what kind of content you make now? Sure, I I'd say a majority of the type of content we make is classified as corporate Video corporate content. What that means is um, we do a lot of safety training videos We do a lot of internal videos. These are videos that no one publicly is ever going to see because they're only for bf. Goodrich employees or macabee employees or something like that Um, but then we also do documentary filmmaking as well Which is something that I really enjoy and that's Truly where my passion is when it comes to video is the storytelling aspect of real life Documentary filmmaking and so we've done corporate. We've done weddings before we don't offer that now Um, we've done uh commercial. We do some commercial stuff We do a lot of facebook and instagram, you know, uh ads and stuff like that But then also documentary filmmaking What is the process of making a film or a video? So the process of making a film and video, um, I would say first off You find out who your client is and what I like to do is I like to meet with them face to face Obviously right now. That's a little bit more difficult. So we'll use zoom Um, but I will just ask them What is the goal of your video? What are you trying to accomplish? Because a lot of times people come to us and say We want a video, but we don't really know what we want. We don't know what that looks like And so first and foremost, who is your audience? What is the goal? What is the purpose of the video? Once we've established that we look at, um, Okay, what is it going to take to tell that story? Do we think it's going to take one day of interviews and then filming b-roll? B-roll is the those are shots that you would see Um over top of someone talking. So for instance, if I were talking But you also shot several shots of our studio. That's called b-roll Um, is it going to take one day two days 10 days five days? Uh, and then what does it look like for editing? So is this editing going to be graphics heavy? Are we going to have to do animation? Anything like that? And then I can go back to my client and say all right, mr. Or mrs. Client you have option a is going to be this price option b is this price option c is this price Obviously the the the different options layout we can film for four days We can film for 20 days. We can add graphics. We can have You know a drone flying over or no drones or whatever and then I try to cater Within their budget and then they can let us know option b looks good. Um, let's go with that And then we schedule the dates we say what it is the interviews when does the b-roll is the You know if we're filming in a plant that's manufacturing something is the plant available for us to film during these times We go into scheduling Uh, once we've scheduled it obviously we show up and we film we've got it all written out This is all done during something called pre production So all those meetings and getting the shot lists written out all that is called pre production Then we go into production which is showing up filming Um asking the questions getting the b-roll gathering all of it Then we come back to the studio and we go into production I'm sorry post production and that is we offload all the footage We get it all organized and we go into the editing process Once we've edited our first draft we send that draft off to the client They'll watch it typically a day or two goes by and then they come back and they'll have a list of revisions That's very very like regular that happens all the time We expect revisions because we want to work hand in hand with our client We don't want to just say here's a video. All right. See uh, what if they hate it? You know, what if there's one little thing we could have done that would have made it that much better So um in our contract we state that they have up to three edit revisions So, uh, that would be our first round of revisions. We send it off and they'll say Uh, you know, you misspelled a name here, you know change the color on this shot here We want this bond take this shot out because there's a proprietary machine in the background that we can't show in the video Stuff like that. Um, we go through one or two rounds of revisions at that point. We're typically done Send the video off. We get our final payment. So how we handle payments We do 50 up front that books the production days And then they pay that we do the production and then we get the 50 remaining balance on the back end So once they've approved the video and we're good to go They pay us Everyone's happy and then hopefully we're doing work with them again, you know a couple months when they need more videos Hey, what is your favorite part of production just from pre-production to post-production? My favorite part is definitely production if I had to out of pre-production production and post Production is what I love. I love Being out in the field. We're here in the studio and getting to work with different styles of lighting getting to ask different questions What I really love is the human element though and that's communicating with the people that I'm filming and pulling emotions and responses out of them that They they might not have been able to do on the right. You know, they couldn't set a phone up and and give the type of response I need so a lot of times I'll ask a question and they may answer and then I'll ask the same question in a different way and get a little twist on it and try to get them comfortable in front of the camera So that you know, sometimes we need vulnerability. We need true human emotion So that we can get that story Um, told the way that we think it needs to be told so that it's effective. So production. I love it. I love carrying the camera around Filming um, that that's my jam, but I do it all, you know, I start I do pre-production production and post where we kind of We're we do all three here Okay, so the last thing is I know you made a documentary for the state of Alabama for the bicentennial Would you like to talk about that a little bit just kind of explain what that is and Absolutely. So Yeah, long story short. Um, I made a video of a friend of mine I wanted to film a documentary and I told him look, you don't have to pay me I just want to do it because he has a really unique story I made the documentary I showed it to a few people someone at the local arts council saw it They wanted me to come and then make a video a little small documentary about a local artist here who's creating These different panels and pieces of art for the bicentennial commission That's the people that you know celebrate alabama's 200th birthday Well, then the bicentennial commission found out that we were going to do documentary and they said hey We want a documentary, but it was like way bigger And so it went from a one-day shoot to over a year of filming It obviously the budget has increased substantially Because we needed to film for a year and take the editing and all that good stuff. So That was an incredible experience that documentary actually releases. It's probably it may be released by the time this airs but it's supposed to release on August no and in two weeks from now. So august 16th is when it airs on apt Alabama public television and then once it's aired. It's fully available to the public for free And everyone will get to go and enjoy that. It's called alabama in the making One cool story about some of what I do And I'm getting a little bit off of the documentary, but I'll come back to it Um, we were we made a video Uh, as just in april fool's video like a silly video that we put on the internet Um, a guy in los angeles saw it and he shared the video on facebook And I went and I thanked him for sharing and he said your video brought me joy today I find value in that and he said any camera that we make that you want is yours So come to find out this is the ceo of a company in los angeles called red If you've ever heard of a red camera as you uh by the laugh you yeah, so we um We have a connection now with the ceo of red digital cinema and he sent us a fully outfitted Red camera system that is just it's right back there and it's incredible and we got that camera And then two weeks later we got booked for that documentary And so we were able to shoot the most of the documentary on our brand new red camera That we were given for free from the ceo of red I got to go out to los angeles earlier this year and meet with him and talk with him And it was a really really awesome experience and so that just shows you the power of video It was a video that we made that got us the red camera Someone just saw it randomly on facebook It was a video that we made in a documentary that Tied in and got us the big documentary with the state. So videos work. They're very effective Um, and and yeah, so that I I had to get that story in there because I know I guess you didn't know about it and so I wanted to make sure everyone knew Uh, that that's just a really cool story about um about see creative and about our journey and getting to film that documentary on that Free amazing camera system was uh, was really cool I saw that uh video on your youtube channel. I was like How in the world do you just get a red camera for free? And I think that's interesting because I think it's also important to know that those cameras are in the tens of thousands of dollars Yeah, it's so it's yeah the one that he sent us is a $50,000. Uh, yeah That's uh, you got a good deal on that one. Yep, didn't even pay shipping Yeah, that was awesome That's all the questions I have for you so You'd like to share anything else? Uh, yeah, absolutely. So, um, I appreciate you reaching out to me about this video I'm so sorry that the power blue a transformer blue outside. I don't know but Here's this is actually funny. What I was talking about earlier in this video, right was about You have the tools and we started this video with a big professional Camera setup. I don't know if you can see it back there, but that's where I was sitting I had my I had a big fancy camera and lighting and audio and all this stuff And it was a lot of fun and it obviously looked better than what you're seeing now but We were able to improvise I said Well, like the the power went out But I still have a device I still have a tool here in my pocket that will give me video And it will still let me tell this story and that is the most important thing That you can tell a story with a big fancy red You can tell a story with a cell phone and the content the message is the same No matter what it doesn't matter what you shoot it on what you edit it on You're still getting the content. And so if I were to have one one final thing to say Maybe his motivation or inspiration is to go back to what you were saying and that is Hopefully i'm still there. Yeah, i'm still there again My goodness technology That final bit is to say Just just create just make content with your cell phone with your little camera with your big vcr VHS camera if your parents have one that's been sitting since the 90s Just just do something be creative make content and um and tell stories Because at the end of the day there is a market there is a need there is a demand there will always be a demand for video So the sooner you start The better you're going to be throughout throughout your journey as uh as a content creator as a videographer